Planted Not Buried Quotes

Sometimes when you're in a dark place you think you've been buried, but you've actually been planted.

A doctor can bury his mistakes, but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.

Pitiful is the person who is afraid of taking risks. Perhaps this person will never be disappointed or disillusioned; perhaps she won’t suffer the way people do when they have a dream to follow. But when that person looks back – and at some point everyone looks back – she will hear her heart saying, “What have you done with the miracles that God planted in your days? What have you done with the talents God bestowed on you? You buried yourself in a cave because you were fearful of losing those talents. So this is your heritage; the certainty that you wasted your life.

When one is burying a dream, one might as well plant another dream.

...To be honest, I'd be the last person who should be doling out gardeinng advice. I don't have the patience for growing things. Yes, I realize there's nothing quite as satisfying as eating food that you've pulled up from the ground and that's why, at the height of the planting season, I bury cans of tomato soup in my backyard and dig them up in late spring.

Secrets are like plants. They can stay buried deep in the earth for a long time, but eventually they'll send up shoots and give themselves away. They have to. It's their nature. Just a tiny green stem at first. Which slowly, insidiously grows taller, stronger, unfolding itself, until there it is. A big fat secret, right in front of your face; a fully bloomed flower perfumed with the scent of deception.

Don't you think I ever wanted other things? Don't you think I had dreams and hopes? What about my life? What about me. Don't you think it ever crossed my mind to want to know other men? That I wanted to lay up somewhere and forget about my responsibilities? That I wanted someone to make me laugh so I could feel good? You not the only one who's got wants and needs. But I held on to you, Troy. I took all my feelings, my wants and needs, my dreams...and I buried them inside you. I planted myself inside you and waited to bloom. And it didn't take me no eighteen years to find out the soil was hard and rocky and it wasn't never gonna bloom.

What actually happens when you die is that your brain stops working and your body rots, like Rabbit did when he died and we buried him in the earth at the bottom of the garden. And all his molecules were broken down into other molecules and they went into the earth and were eaten by worms and went into the plants and if we go and dig in the same place in 10 years there will be nothing exept his skeleton left. And in 1,000 years even his skeleton will be gone. But that is all right because he is a part of the flowers and the apple tree and the hawthorn bush now.

We keep on burying our dead/ We keep on planting their bones in the ground/ But they won't grow/ The sun doesn't help/ The rain doesn't help.

There has always been a sliver of panic in him, deeply buried, when it comes to his daughter: a fear that he is no good as a father, that he is doing everything wrong. That he never quite understood the rules. All those Parisian mothers pushing buggies through the Jardin des Plantes or holding up cardigans in department stores—it seemed to him that those women nodded to each other as they passed, as though each possessed some secret knowledge that he did not. How do you ever know for certain that you are doing the right thing?

Sometimes life takes you into a dark place where you feel it's impossible to breathe. You think you've been buried, but don't give up, because if truth be told, you've actually been planted.

Sometimes when you're in a dark place you think you've been buried but actually you've been planted.

In May, when coyotes howl beneath an unnervingly large moon, taller plants, such as spiderworts and black-eyed Susans, begin to creep over the tinier blooms, stealing their light and water. The necks of the smaller flowers break and their petals flutter away, and before long they are buried underground. This is why the Osage Indians refer to May as the time of the flower-killing moon.

This is my life, I thought...I have excised the cancer from my past, cut it out; I have crossed the high plains, descended into the desert, traversed oceans, and planted my feet in new soil; I have been the apprentice, paid my dues, and have just become master of my ship. But when I look down, why do I see the ancient, tarred, mud-stained slippers that I buried at the start of the journey still stuck to my feet?

When they ask why we stayed together for so long I say, I don’t know. I just know that we cried at the exact same time in every movie. I know we blushed everyday for the first two years. I know I always stole the covers and she never woke me up. I know the exact look on her face, the first night she used my toothbrush. The next day, I brushed my teeth like thirtysome times, ‘cause I didn’t want to let her go. You have to understand when it hurt to love her, it hurt the way the light hurts your eyes in the middle of the night, but I had to see, even through the ruin, if what we were burying were seeds. There were so many plants in our house, you could rake the leaves even through that winter when I was trying to make angels in the snow of her cold shoulder. She was still leaving love notes in my suitcase; I’d always find them.

The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his client to plant vines — so they should go as far as possible from home to build their first buildings.

Sometimes it feels like life has buried us in the dirt, when in reality we've been planted with an opportunity to grow.

October Fullness” Little by little, and also in great leaps, life happened to me, and how insignificant this business is. These veins carried my blood, which I scarcely ever saw, I breathed the air of so many places without keeping a sample of any. In the end, everyone is aware of this: nobody keeps any of what he has, and life is only a borrowing of bones. The best thing was learning not to have too much either of sorrow or of joy, to hope for the chance of a last drop, to ask more from honey and from twilight. Perhaps it was my punishment. Perhaps I was condemned to be happy. Let it be known that nobody crossed my path without sharing my being. I plunged up to the neck into adversities that were not mine, into all the sufferings of others. It wasn’t a question of applause or profit. Much less. It was not being able to live or breathe in this shadow, the shadow of others like towers, like bitter trees that bury you, like cobblestones on the knees. Our own wounds heal with weeping, our own wounds heal with singing, but in our own doorway lie bleeding widows, Indians, poor men, fishermen. The miner’s child doesn’t know his father amidst all that suffering. So be it, but my business was the fullness of the spirit: a cry of pleasure choking you, a sigh from an uprooted plant, the sum of all action. It pleased me to grow with the morning, to bathe in the sun, in the great joy of sun, salt, sea-light and wave, and in that unwinding of the foam my heart began to move, growing in that essential spasm, and dying away as it seeped into the sand.

My eyelids are heavy as stone. But when I sleep, I'll have that dream again. I haven't wanted to tell you about it, until now. I'll be in the Separates, and I'll be digging with my bare hands. When I've made a hole deep enough to plant a tree, I'll place my fingers inside. I'll slip off the ring you gave me. It will catch the light and glint a rainbow of colors over my skin, but I will take my hands away, leaving it there. I'll sprinkle the earth back over it, and I will bury it. Back where it belongs. I'll rest against a tree's rough trunk. The sun will be setting, it's dazzling color threading through the sky, making my cheeks warm. Then I will wake up. Good-bye, Ty, Gemma

Me: Remember, when burying a body, make sure to cover it with endangered plants so it’s illegal to dig up! Me: Make sure to follow me for more gardening tips!

This isn't how it should be, God. Thousands of graves marking thousands of lives--so much focus on death. Did the gravediggers spend their lives just serving the dead? How many Numbers ticked away for the sake of carving headstones no one would read? As I stare at this scene, I decide I don't want a headstone when I die. I don't even want to be buried. I want to disappear--save that chunk of earth for people to live on. This land I stand on is worthless now. No one can build a house here. No one can plant gardens or start a new village. Is that what the people buried beneath me would have wanted? Earth wasn't intended to hold only dead bodies. I stand. God, I need to live.

The plants themselves gave me a cure for that: They taught me to bury myself when I need to regain my strength. It is what they do—return to the ground, rest, and begin again.

Fungi make worlds. They also unmake them. There are lots of ways to catch them in the act. When you cook mushroom soup, or just eat it. When you go out gathering mushrooms, or buy them. When you ferment alcohol, plant a plant, or just bury your hands in the soil; and whether you let a fungus into your mind, or marvel at the way that it might enter the mind of another. Whether you’re cured by a fungus, or watch it cure someone else; whether you build your home from fungi, or start growing mushrooms in your home, fungi will catch you in the act. If you’re alive, they already have.

Don't let your inner demons Take the best of your creeds. If God gives you lemons, You must plant the seeds. Do not be so self-absorbed That you can't see the tree. If you succumb to what's morbid You bury your chance to be free.

ROSE: I been standing with you! I been right here with you, Troy. I got a life, too. I gave eighteen years of my life to stand in the same spot with you. Don't you think I ever wanted other things? Don't you think I had dreams and hopes? What about my life? What about me. Don't you think it ever crossed my mind to want to know other men? That I wanted to lay up somewhere and forget about my responsibilities? That I wanted someone to make me laugh so I could feel good? You not the only one who's got wants and needs. But I held on to you, Troy. I took all my feelings, my wants and needs, my dreams...and I buried them inside you. I planted a seed and watched and prayed over it. I planted myself inside you and waited to bloom. And it didn't take me not eighteen years to find out the soil was hard and rocky and it wasn't never gonna bloom. But I held on to you. I held you tighter. You was my husband. I owed you everything I had. Every part of me I could find to give you. And upstairs in that room...with the darkness falling in on me...I gave everything I had to try and erase the doubt that you wasn't the fines man in the world. And wherever you was going...I wanted to be there with you. Cause you was my husband. Cause that's the only way I was gonna survive as your wife. You always taking about what you give...and what you don't have to give. But you take too. You take...and you don't even know nobody's giving!

She was hurt to find life made up of so many little things. At first she believed most faithfully that they had a deeper meaning and a coherent larger purpose; but after a while she saw to her dismay that the deeper and larger things were merely shadows cast by the small. So she buried the whole great treasure of winged dreams and iridescent shades under an oak-tree in the farthest corner of her heart, and planted a bush of wild roses over it. A small grave of dreams. Secretly and silently she buried them, a little ashamed, as a burglar might be who had long pursued some gleaming ruby necklace, and, having by infinite stealth and risk obtained it, found that it was red glass.

The more he went, the more it felt like Chaos was planted in his life. He just needed to figure out why. And those nameless dead people were his clue along with that note about letting the dead bury the dead.

When I tried to sing by myself, I felt sad and empty, for inevitably my father's favorite songs came to me, and before I got to "und auf den Wiesen blühen die Blümelein rot und blau" (and on the meadows bloom the little flowers red and blue), I had to hide and cry. He was buried somewhere in France, and I was sure no one had planted a flower on his resting place. Who would have, for a soldier who had fought for Hitler?

I've been thinking more about perennial plants. About how sometimes life needs to go underground, bury itself deep to survive, and how maybe that's not a bad thing. It's just necessary. And that's okay." -Natalie

You have to take risks. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen. Every day, God gives us the sun - and also one moment when we have the ability to change everything that makes us unhappy. Every day, we try to pretend that we haven't perceived that moment, that it doesn't exist - that today is the same as yesterday and will be the same as tomorrow. But if people really pay attention to their everyday lives, they will discover that magic moment. It may arrive in the instant when we are doing something mundane, like putting our front-door key in the lock; it may lie hidden in the quiet that follows the lunch hour or in the thousand and one things that all seem the same to us. But that moment exists - a moment when all the power of the stars becomes a part of us and enables us to perform miracles. Joy is sometimes a blessing, but it is often a conquest. Our magic moment helps us to change and sends us off in search of our dreams. Yes, we are going to suffer, we will have difficult times, and we will experience many disappointments - but all of these are transitory; it leaves no permanent mark. And one day we will look back with pride and faith at the journey we have taken. Pitiful is the person who is afraid of taking risks. Perhaps, this person would never be disappointed or disillusioned; perhaps she won't suffer the way people do when they have a dream to follow. But when the person looks back - she will never hear her heart saying 'What have you done with the miracles that God planted in your days? What have you done with the talents God has bestowed upon you? You buried yourself in a cave because you were fearful of losing those talents. So this is your heritage, the certainty that you wasted your life.' Pitiful are the people who must realize this. Because when they are finally able to believe in miracles, their life's magic moments will have already passed them by.

That Elizabeth-Jane Farfrae be not told of my death, or made to grieve on account of me. "& that I be not bury'd in consecrated ground. "& that no sexton be asked to toll the bell. "& that nobody is wished to see my dead body. "& that no mourners walk behind me at my funeral. "& that no flowers be planted on my grave, "& that no man remember me. "To this I put my name.

Burying and Planting The culmination of one love, one dream, one self, is the anonymous seed of the next. There is very little difference between burying and planting. For often, we need to put dead things to rest, so that new life can grow. And further, the thing put to rest—whether it be a loved one, a dream, or a false way of seeing—becomes the fertilizer for the life about to form. As the well-used thing joins with the earth, the old love fertilizes the new; the broken dream fertilizes the dream yet conceived; the painful way of being that strapped us to the world fertilizes the freer inner stance about to unfold. This is very helpful when considering the many forms of self we inhabit over a lifetime. One self carries us to the extent of its usefulness and dies. We are then forced to put that once beloved skin to rest, to join it with the ground of spirit from which it came, so it may fertilize the next skin of self that will carry us into tomorrow. There is always grief for what is lost and always surprise at what is to be born. But much of our pain in living comes from wearing a dead and useless skin, refusing to put it to rest, or from burying such things with the intent of hiding them rather than relinquishing them. For every new way of being, there is a failed attempt mulching beneath the tongue. For every sprig that breaks surface, there is an old stick stirring underground. For every moment of joy sprouting, there is a new moment of struggle taking root. We live, embrace, and put to rest our dearest things, including how we see ourselves, so we can resurrect our lives anew.

Don't let your inner demons Take the best of your creeds. If God gives you lemons, You must plant the seeds. Do not be so self-absorbed That you can't see the tree. If you succumb to the morbid You bury a chance to be free.

In April, millions of tiny flowers spread over the blackjack hills and vast prairies in the Osage territory of Oklahoma. There are Johnny-jump-ups and spring beauties and little bluets. The Osage writer John Joseph Mathews observed that the galaxy of petals makes it look as if the “gods had left confetti.” In May, when coyotes howl beneath an unnervingly large moon, taller plants, such as spiderworts and black-eyed Susans, begin to creep over the tinier blooms, stealing their light and water. The necks of the smaller flowers break and their petals flutter away, and before long they are buried underground. This is why the Osage Indians refer to May as the time of the flower-killing moon.

This is my life, I thought...I have exised the cancer from my past, cut it out; I have crossed the high plains, descended into the desert, traversed oceans, and planted my feet in new soil; I have been the apprentice, paid my dues, and have just become master of my ship. But when I look down, why do I see the ancient, tarred, mudstained slippers that I buried at the start of the journey still stuck to my feet?

Our global civilization came at a huge cost. We needed a whole bunch of energy to build it, and we got that energy by burning fossil fuels, which came from dead plants and animals buried deep in the ground. We used up most of this fuel before you got here, and now it’s pretty much all gone. This means that we no longer have enough energy to keep our civilization running like it was before. So we’ve had to cut back. Big-time. We call this the Global Energy Crisis, and it’s been going on for a while now.

A person should be buried only half a meter, or two feet, below the surface. Then a tree should be planted there. He should be buried in a coffin that decays so that when you plant a tree on top the tree will take something out of his substance and change it into tree-substance. When you visit the grave you don’t visit a dead man, you visit a living being who was just transformed into a tree. You say, “This is my grandfather, the tree is growing well, fantastic.” You can develop a beautiful forest that will be more beautiful than a normal forest because the trees will have their roots in graves. It will be a park, a place for pleasure, a place to live, even a place to hunt.

A quiet but indomitable voice behind me said, “I believe this is my dance.” It was Ren. I could feel his presence. The warmth of him seeped into my back, and I quivered all over like spring leaves in a warm breeze. Kishan narrowed his eyes and said, “I believe it is the lady’s choice.” Kishan looked down at me. I didn’t want to cause a scene, so I simply nodded and removed my arms from his neck. Kishan glared at his replacement and stalked angrily off the dance floor. Ren stepped in front of me, took my hands gently in his, and placed them around his neck, bringing my face achingly close to his. Then he slid his hands slowly and deliberately over my bare arms and down my sides, until they encircled my waist. He traced little circles on my exposes lower back with his fingers, squeezed my waist, and drew my body up tightly against him. He guided me expertly through the slow dance. He didn’t say anything, at least not with words, but he was still sending lots of signals. He pressed his forehead against mine and leaned down to nuzzle my ear. He buried his face in my hair and lifted his hand to stroke down the length of it. His fingers played along my bare arm and at my waist. When the song ended, it took both of us a min to recover our senses and remember where we were. He traced the curve of my bottom lip with his finger then reached up to take my hand from around his neck and led me outside to the porch. I thought he would stop there, but he headed down the stairs and guided me to a wooded area with stone benches. The moon made his skin glow. He was wearing a white shirt with dark slacks. The white made me think of him as the tiger. He pulled me under the shadow of a tree. I stood very still and quiet, afraid that if I spoke I’d say something I’d regret. He cupped my chin and tilted my face up so he could look in my eyes. “Kelsey, there’s something I need to say to you, and I want you to be silent and listen.” I nodded my head hesitantly. “First, I want to let you know that I heard everything you said to me the other night, and I’ve been giving your words some very serious thought. It’s important for you to understand that.” He shifted and picked up a lock of hair, tucked it behind my ear, and trailed his fingers down my cheek to my lips. He smiled sweetly at me, and I felt the little love plant bask in his smile and turn toward it as if it contained the nourishing rays of the sun. “Kelsey,” he brushed a hand through his hair, and his smile turned into a lopsided grin, “the fact is…I’m in love with you, and I have been for some time.” I sucked in a deep breath. He picked up my hand and played with my fingers. “I don’t want you to leave.” He began kissing my fingers while looking directly into my eyes. It was hypnotic. He took something out of his pocket. “I want to give you something.” He held out a golden chain covered with small tinkling bell charms. “It’s an anklet. They’re very popular here, and I got this one so we’d never have to search for a bell again.” He crouched down, wrapping his hand around the back of my calf, and then slid his palm down to my ankle and attached the clasp. I swayed and barely stopped myself from falling over. He trailed his warm fingers lightly over the bells before standing up. Putting his hands on my shoulders, he squeezed, and pulled me closer. “Kells . . . please.” He kissed my temple, my forehead, and my cheek. Between each kiss, he sweetly begged, “Please. Please. Please. Tell me you’ll stay with me.” When his lips brushed lightly against mine, he said, “I need you,” then crushed his lips against mine.

For the rest of mankind to be with Christ means death, but for Christians it is a means of grace. Baptism is their assurance that they are "dead with Christ", "crucified with him", "buried with him", "planted together in the likeness of his death". All this creates in them the assurance that they will also live with him. "We with Christ"--for Christ is Emmanuel, "God with us." Only when we know Christ in this way is our being with him the source of grace.

What actually happens when you die is that your brain stops working and your body rots, like Rabbit did when he died and we buried him in the earth at the bottom of the garden. And all his molecules were broken down into other molecules and they went into the earth and were eaten by worms and went into the plants and if we go dig in the same place in 10 years there will be nothing except his skeleton left. And in 1,000 years even his skeleton will be gone. But that is all right because he is part of the flowers and the apple tree and the hawthorn bush now. When people die they are sometimes put into coffins which means that they don't mix with the earth for a very long time until the wood of the coffin rots. But Mother was cremated. This means that she was put into a coffin and burnt and ground up and turned into ash and smoke. I do not know what happens to the ash and I couldn't ask at the crematorium because I didn't go to the funeral. But the smoke goes out of the chimney and into the air and sometimes I look up into the sky and I think that there are molecules of Mother up there, or in clouds over Africa or the Antartic, or coming down as rain in rainforests in Brazil, or in snow somewhere.

And then it struck him what lay buried far down under the earth on which his feet were so firmly planted: the ominous rumbling of the deepest darkness, secret rivers that transported desire, slimy creatures writhing, the lair of earthquakes ready to transform whole cities into mounds of rubble. These, too, were helping to create the rhythm of the earth. He stopped dancing and, catching his breath, stared at the ground beneath his feet as though peering into a bottomless hole.

Sometimes your garden surprises you. You don't remember planting strawberries or mint, but there it is, rising up in the middle of the carrot patch. Maybe the seeds blew in from the neighbor's garden. Or maybe they were buried in the dirt and you unearthed them when you tilled the soil. Or maybe you're reaping what you've sown. However it happened, you now have unexpected bounty. Accept it with gratitude.

I urge you to imagine the interlaced abundance if, throughout suburbia, every stockade fence, every chain-linked boundary, were to be buried in varied greenery and each of them and every hedge transformed into a hedgerow. I ask you, at least, to open the door to some first guest that your party might begin.

Everybody needs that one friend who just “gets” them. If I had called Tori and said, “Bring a shovel,” she wouldn’t have asked if we were planting roses or burying a no-good boyfriend, she’d just show up ready to dig.

The grey-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night, Chequering the eastern clouds with streaks of light, And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels From forth day's path and Titan's fiery wheels: Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye, The day to cheer and night's dank dew to dry, I must up-fill this osier cage of ours With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers. The earth that's nature's mother is her tomb; What is her burying grave that is her womb, And from her womb children of divers kind We sucking on her natural bosom find, Many for many virtues excellent, None but for some and yet all different. O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities: For nought so vile that on the earth doth live But to the earth some special good doth give, Nor aught so good but strain'd from that fair use Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse: Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied; And vice sometimes by action dignified. Within the infant rind of this small flower Poison hath residence and medicine power: For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part; Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart. Two such opposed kings encamp them still In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will; And where the worser is predominant, Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.

In order to possess "The Wonder-working Serpent," it is necessary, in the words of the Grimoire, "to buy an egg without haggling," which (by the way) indicates the class of person for and by whom the book was written. This egg is to be buried in a cemetery at midnight, and every morning at sunrise it must be watered with brandy. On the ninth day a spirit appears, and demands your purpose. You reply "I am watering my plant." This occurs on three successive days; at the midnight following the egg is dug up, and found to contain a serpent, with a cock's head. This amiable animal answers to the name of Ambrosiel. Carry it in your bosom, and your suit inevitably prospers.

I am the gorilla who feels his wings growing, a giddy gorilla in the centre of a satin-like emptiness; the night too grows like an electrical plant, shooting white-hot buds into velvet black space. I am the black space of the night in which the buds break with anguish, a starfish swimming on the frozen dew of the moon. I am the germ of a new insanity, a freak dressed in intelligible language, a sob that is buried like a splinter in the quick of the soul. I am dancing the very sane and lovely dance of the angelic gorilla. These are my brothers and sisters who are insane and unangelic. We are dancing in the hollow of the cup of nothingness. We are of one flesh, but separated like stars.

Water splashes and runs in a film across the glass floor suspended above the mosaics. The Hacı Kadın hamam is a typical post-Union fusion of architectures; Ottoman domes and niches built over some forgotten Byzantine palace, years and decades of trash blinding, gagging, burying the angel-eyed Greek faces in the mosaic floor; century upon century. That haunted face was only exposed to the light again when the builders tore down the cheap apartment blocks and discovered a wonder. But Istanbul is wonder upon wonder, sedimented wonder, metamorphic cross-bedded wonder. You can’t plant a row of beans without turning up some saint or Sufi. At some point every country realizes it must eat its history. Romans ate Greeks, Byzantines ate Romans, Ottomans ate Byzantines, Turks ate Ottomans. The EU eats everything. Again, the splash and run as Ferid Bey scoops warm water in a bronze bowl from the marble basin and pours it over his head.

This is my life, I thought, as my taxi slogged through heavy traffic and inched through the tunnel to Logan Airport. I have excised the cancer from my past, cut it out; I have crossed the high plains, descended into the desert, traversed oceans, and planted my feet in new soil; I have been the apprentice, paid my dues, and just become the master of my ship. But when I look down, why do I see the ancient, tarred, mud-stained slippers that I buried at the start of the journey still stuck to my feet?

Instructions for Dad. I don't want to go into a fridge at an undertaker's. I want you to keep me at home until the funeral. Please can someone sit with me in case I got lonely? I promise not to scare you. I want to be buried in my butterfly dress, my lilac bra and knicker set and my black zip boots (all still in the suitcase that I packed for Sicily). I also want to wear the bracelet Adam gave me. Don't put make-up on me. It looks stupid on dead people. I do NOT want to be cremated. Cremations pollute the atmosphere with dioxins,k hydrochloric acid, hydrofluoric acid, sulphur dioxide and carbon dioxide. They also have those spooky curtains in crematoriums. I want a biodegradable willow coffin and a woodland burial. The people at the Natural Death Centre helped me pick a site not for from where we live, and they'll help you with all the arrangements. I want a native tree planted on or near my grave. I'd like an oak, but I don't mind a sweet chestnut or even a willow. I want a wooden plaque with my name on. I want wild plants and flowers growing on my grave. I want the service to be simple. Tell Zoey to bring Lauren (if she's born by then). Invite Philippa and her husband Andy (if he wants to come), also James from the hospital (though he might be busy). I don't want anyone who doesn't know my saying anything about me. THe Natural Death Centre people will stay with you, but should also stay out of it. I want the people I love to get up and speak about me, and even if you cry it'll be OK. I want you to say honest things. Say I was a monster if you like, say how I made you all run around after me. If you can think of anything good, say that too! Write it down first, because apparently people often forget what they mean to say at funerals. Don't under any circumstances read that poem by Auden. It's been done to death (ha, ha) and it's too sad. Get someone to read Sonnet 12 by Shakespeare. Music- "Blackbird" by the Beatles. "Plainsong" by The Cure. "Live Like You Were Dying" by Tim McGraw. "All the Trees of the Field Will Clap Their Hands" by Sufian Stevens. There may not be time for all of them, but make sure you play the last one. Zoey helped me choose them and she's got them all on her iPod (it's got speakers if you need to borrow it). Afterwards, go to a pub for lunch. I've got £260 in my savings account and I really want you to use it for that. Really, I mean it-lunch is on me. Make sure you have pudding-sticky toffee, chocolate fudge cake, ice-cream sundae, something really bad for you. Get drunk too if you like (but don't scare Cal). Spend all the money. And after that, when days have gone by, keep an eye out for me. I might write on the steam in the mirror when you're having a bath, or play with the leaves on the apple tree when you're out in the garden. I might slip into a dream. Visit my grave when you can, but don't kick yourself if you can't, or if you move house and it's suddenly too far away. It looks pretty there in the summer (check out the website). You could bring a picnic and sit with me. I'd like that. OK. That's it. I love you. Tessa xxx

Ah, are you digging on my grave, My loved one? -- planting rue?" -- "No: yesterday he went to wed One of the brightest wealth has bred. 'It cannot hurt her now,' he said, 'That I should not be true.'" "Then who is digging on my grave, My nearest dearest kin?" -- "Ah, no: they sit and think, 'What use! What good will planting flowers produce? No tendance of her mound can loose Her spirit from Death's gin.'" "But someone digs upon my grave? My enemy? -- prodding sly?" -- "Nay: when she heard you had passed the Gate That shuts on all flesh soon or late, She thought you no more worth her hate, And cares not where you lie. "Then, who is digging on my grave? Say -- since I have not guessed!" -- "O it is I, my mistress dear, Your little dog, who still lives near, And much I hope my movements here Have not disturbed your rest?" "Ah yes! You dig upon my grave... Why flashed it not to me That one true heart was left behind! What feeling do we ever find To equal among human kind A dog's fidelity!" "Mistress, I dug upon your grave To bury a bone, in case I should be hungry near this spot When passing on my daily trot. I am sorry, but I quite forgot It was your resting place.

And now at last authentic word I bring, Witnessed by every dead and living thing; Good tidings of great joy for you, for all: There is no God; no Fiend with names divine Made us and tortures us; if we must pine, It is to satiate no Being's gall. It was the dark delusion of a dream, That living Person conscious and supreme, Whom we must curse for cursing us with life; Whom we must curse because the life he gave Could not be buried in the quiet grave, Could not be killed by poison or the knife. This little life is all we must endure, The grave's most holy peace is ever sure, We fall asleep and never wake again; Nothing is of us but the mouldering flesh, Whose elements dissolve and merge afresh In earth, air, water, plants, and other men. We finish thus; and all our wretched race Shall finish with its cycle, and give place To other beings with their own time-doom: Infinite aeons ere our kind began; Infinite aeons after the last man Has joined the mammoth in earth's tomb and womb.

If someone drowned at sea 300 years ago, or they died elsewhere but their remains were disposed of in the ocean, they’d either start to decompose immediately or they’d get eaten by fish or other scavengers. Their bones would eventually sink down to the seabed and be slowly buried by marine silt or broken down further over the years, but the flesh would one way or another eventually become water, which would evaporate into clouds and then rain down upon the earth once again to become plants and flowers. The flowers in your garden could once have been Anne Bonny and Mary Read.

Survival is more than burying the damage, it is about befriending it - it is about being thankful for how, at a point in your life, it created graveyards within you. For when you look back, you will finally understand that it is nothing short of incredible, how you managed to emerge like wildflowers, from the cemeteries you held within your soul.

Scott, deaf and enchanted in the gallery, and the whole row of pretty heads at his side saw the concerted rush on Lymond: his assailants downed him without malice and eighteen stones of Molly planted themselves on his chest. “A throw!” said Molly, and Lymond, half buried, gave a choked whoop of laughter and raised a defeated hand in signal to Tammas.

Atticus’s human house plant. The one they buried alive behind the cabin for Zane.” “Oh, yeah,” Felix said. “I wonder how he’s doing?” “Atticus said he finally stopped screaming.

They tried to bury us, but they didn't know we were seeds.

If someone drowned at sea a couple of hundred years ago they’d either start to decompose immediately or they’d get eaten by fish or other scavengers. The bones would eventually sink down to the seabed and either be slowly buried by marine silt or broken down further over the years, but the flesh would one way or another eventually become water, which would evaporate into clouds and then rain down upon the earth once again to become plants and flowers. The flowers in your garden could once have been famous pirates such as Blackbeard or Calico Jack.

Her history welled up in her; things burned, things frozen, buried alive, a whole disordered catalogue of stories told or hidden. She alone could make sense of them. She alone could tell it as it was, for who else would remember? She would begin with the seeds of a starting place planted here in her revisiting, to tell of the mysterious normality of things, of their unexceptional symmetry, of uninterrupted rise and fall of days; of how one could wait, could waste as much time as there was between birth and burial waiting for things that never came.

She nearly stopped forever just outside Ashton, because she came to a tiny cottage buried in a garden. I could live there all alone, she thought, slowing the car to look down the winding garden path to the small blue front door with, perfectly, a white cat on the step. No one would ever find me there, either, behind all those roses, and just to make sure I would plant oleanders by the road. I will light a fire in the cool evenings and toast apples at my own hearth. I will raise white cats and sew white curtains for the windows and sometimes come out of my door to go to the store to buy cinnamon and tea and thread. People will come to me to have their fortunes told, and I will brew love potions for sad maidens; I will have a robin.

I buried her like a pagan. I put deer bones in with her, for her journey; a blanket, for warmth; flowers, cedar fronds, stones from places we’d been, grouse feathers, a tidbit of raw venison hamburger, and a swatch of my own hair. A headstone, a footstone. I planted an aspen tree above the headstone, to give her shade, and to someday provide leaf-music in the breeze. It took a long time before I was worth a damn again. How to measure the eleven years of magic she brought to us? How, now, to say thank you? Too late, as usual, for these sorts of things.

But I think I want to become part of Scotland when I die. In a coffin, you just turn to dust, so I would prefer to be buried in a wicker casket, or in a sheet like the Africans do, so that I actually become part of the earth. I would like a tree to be planted on top of me. And I told my wife Pamela a long time ago the epitaph that I want on my gravestone: Jesus Christ, is that the time already? Failing that, I would like an epitaph in writing so tiny that visitors would have to inch right next to my gravestone to read it. It would say: You're standing on my balls.

Luther Burbank was born in a brick farmhouse in Lancaster Mass, he walked through the woods one winter crunching through the shinycrusted snow stumbling into a little dell where a warm spring was and found the grass green and weeds sprouting and skunk cabbage pushing up a potent thumb, He went home and sat by the stove and read Darwin Struggle for Existence Origin of Species Natural Selection that wasn't what they taught in church, so Luther Burbank ceased to believe moved to Lunenburg, found a seedball in a potato plant sowed the seed and cashed in on Darwin’s Natural Selection on Spencer and Huxley with the Burbank potato. Young man go west; Luther Burbank went to Santa Rosa full of his dream of green grass in winter ever- blooming flowers ever- bearing berries; Luther Burbank could cash in on Natural Selection Luther Burbank carried his apocalyptic dream of green grass in winter and seedless berries and stoneless plums and thornless roses brambles cactus— winters were bleak in that bleak brick farmhouse in bleak Massachusetts— out to sunny Santa Rosa; and he was a sunny old man where roses bloomed all year everblooming everbearing hybrids. America was hybrid America could cash in on Natural Selection. He was an infidel he believed in Darwin and Natural Selection and the influence of the mighty dead and a good firm shipper’s fruit suitable for canning. He was one of the grand old men until the churches and the congregations got wind that he was an infidel and believed in Darwin. Luther Burbank had never a thought of evil, selected improved hybrids for America those sunny years in Santa Rosa. But he brushed down a wasp’s nest that time; he wouldn’t give up Darwin and Natural Selection and they stung him and he died puzzled. They buried him under a cedartree. His favorite photograph was of a little tot standing beside a bed of hybrid everblooming double Shasta daisies with never a thought of evil And Mount Shasta in the background, used to be a volcano but they don’t have volcanos any more.

I passed out cigars to the men, and we lit them with a twig caught alight in the fire and passed the bottle around. Charley was doing most of the talking, telling a hunting story from the days of elk and bison, neither of which anyone in attendance except Charley had ever seen. He made them epic animals in his story, inhabitants of an old and better world not to come around again. He then told of his lost farmstead at the old mound village of Cowee, before one of the many disastrous treaties had driven him and his family west to Nantayale. At Cowee, he has been noted for his success with apple trees, which over the years he had planted at spots where his outhouses had stood. Apples grew on his trees huge as dreams of apples. That Cowee house was old, from the time when they still buried dead loved ones in the dirt floor.

If I longed for destruction it was merely that this eye might be extinguished. I longed for an earthquake, for some cataclysm of nature which would plunge the lighthouse into the sea. I wanted a metamorphosis, a change to fish, to leviathan, to destroyer. I wanted the earth to open up, to swallow everything in one engulfing yawn. I wanted to see the city buried fathoms deep in the bosom of the sea. I wanted to sit in a cave and read by candlelight. (I wanted that eye extinguished so that I might have a change to know my own body, my own desires. I wanted to be alone for a thousand years in order to reflect on what I had seen and heard - and in order to forget. I wanted something of the earth which was not of man's doing, something absolutely divorced from the human of which I was surfeited. I wanted something purely terrestrial and absolutely divested of idea. I wanted to feel the blood running back into my veins, even at the cost of annihilation. I wanted to shake the stone and the light out of my system. I wanted the dark fecundity of nature, the deep well of the womb, silence, or else the lapping of the black waters of death. I wanted to be that night which the remorseless eye illuminated, a night diapered with stars and trailing comets. To be of night, so frighteningly silent, so utterly incomprehensible and eloquent at the same time. Never more to speak or to listen or to think. To be englobed and encompassed and to encompass and to englobe at the same time. No more pity, no more tenderness. To be human only terrestrially, like a plant or a worm or a brook. To be decomposed, divested of light and stone, variable as the molecule, durable as the atom, heartless as the earth itself.

My dad didn’t want to be buried, he wanted to be planted. So we dug a hole for his ashes on the bonfire hill and planted an oak tree there. My mother wants us to plant another tree over her ashes right next to it when it’s her turn

BOWLS OF FOOD Moon and evening star do their slow tambourine dance to praise this universe. The purpose of every gathering is discovered: to recognize beauty and love what’s beautiful. “Once it was like that, now it’s like this,” the saying goes around town, and serious consequences too. Men and women turn their faces to the wall in grief. They lose appetite. Then they start eating the fire of pleasure, as camels chew pungent grass for the sake of their souls. Winter blocks the road. Flowers are taken prisoner underground. Then green justice tenders a spear. Go outside to the orchard. These visitors came a long way, past all the houses of the zodiac, learning Something new at each stop. And they’re here for such a short time, sitting at these tables set on the prow of the wind. Bowls of food are brought out as answers, but still no one knows the answer. Food for the soul stays secret. Body food gets put out in the open like us. Those who work at a bakery don’t know the taste of bread like the hungry beggars do. Because the beloved wants to know, unseen things become manifest. Hiding is the hidden purpose of creation: bury your seed and wait. After you die, All the thoughts you had will throng around like children. The heart is the secret inside the secret. Call the secret language, and never be sure what you conceal. It’s unsure people who get the blessing. Climbing cypress, opening rose, Nightingale song, fruit, these are inside the chill November wind. They are its secret. We climb and fall so often. Plants have an inner Being, and separate ways of talking and feeling. An ear of corn bends in thought. Tulip, so embarrassed. Pink rose deciding to open a competing store. A bunch of grapes sits with its feet stuck out. Narcissus gossiping about iris. Willow, what do you learn from running water? Humility. Red apple, what has the Friend taught you? To be sour. Peach tree, why so low? To let you reach. Look at the poplar, tall but without fruit or flower. Yes, if I had those, I’d be self-absorbed like you. I gave up self to watch the enlightened ones. Pomegranate questions quince, Why so pale? For the pearl you hid inside me. How did you discover my secret? Your laugh. The core of the seen and unseen universes smiles, but remember, smiles come best from those who weep. Lightning, then the rain-laughter. Dark earth receives that clear and grows a trunk. Melon and cucumber come dragging along on pilgrimage. You have to be to be blessed! Pumpkin begins climbing a rope! Where did he learn that? Grass, thorns, a hundred thousand ants and snakes, everything is looking for food. Don’t you hear the noise? Every herb cures some illness. Camels delight to eat thorns. We prefer the inside of a walnut, not the shell. The inside of an egg, the outside of a date. What about your inside and outside? The same way a branch draws water up many feet, God is pulling your soul along. Wind carries pollen from blossom to ground. Wings and Arabian stallions gallop toward the warmth of spring. They visit; they sing and tell what they think they know: so-and-so will travel to such-and-such. The hoopoe carries a letter to Solomon. The wise stork says lek-lek. Please translate. It’s time to go to the high plain, to leave the winter house. Be your own watchman as birds are. Let the remembering beads encircle you. I make promises to myself and break them. Words are coins: the vein of ore and the mine shaft, what they speak of. Now consider the sun. It’s neither oriental nor occidental. Only the soul knows what love is. This moment in time and space is an eggshell with an embryo crumpled inside, soaked in belief-yolk, under the wing of grace, until it breaks free of mind to become the song of an actual bird, and God.

What is the difference between a squirrel burying acorns across the forest and humans planting potatoes across the globe? Who is master, and who is the servant? Is it the acorn's or potato's idea to be nutritious, or the creature that buries them? Evolution is not about design or will; it is the outcome of constant endeavors made by organisms that want to survive and better themselves. The collective result is intoxicatingly beautiful, rife with oddities, and surprisingly brilliant, yet no agent is in control. Evolution arises from the bottom up--so, too, does hope.

In 1907, Haber was the first to obtain nitrogen, the main nutrient required for plant growth, directly from the air. In this way, from one day to the next, he addressed the scarcity of fertilizer that threatened to unleash an unprecedented global famine at the beginning of the twentieth century. Had it not been for Haber, hundreds of millions of people who until then had depended on natural fertilizers such as guano and saltpetre for their crops would have died from lack of nourishment. In prior centuries, Europe’s insatiable hunger had driven bands of Englishmen as far as Egypt to despoil the tombs of the ancient pharaohs, in search not of gold, jewels or antiquities, but of the nitrogen contained in the bones of the thousands of slaves buried along with the Nile pharaohs, as sacrificial victims, to serve them even after their deaths. The English tomb raiders had exhausted the reserves in continental Europe; they dug up more than three million human skeletons, along with the bones of hundreds of thousands of dead horses that soldiers had ridden in the battles of Austerlitz, Leipzig and Waterloo, sending them by ship to the port of Hull in the north of England, where they were ground in the bone mills of Yorkshire to fertilize the verdant fields of Albion.

Firmly planted. Not fallen from on high: sprung up from below. Ochre, the color of burnt honey. The color of a sun buried a thousand years ago and dug up only yesterday. Fresh green and orange stripes running across its still-warm body. Circles, Greek frets: scattered traces of a lost alphabet? The belly of a woman heavy with child, the neck of a bird. If you cover and uncover its mouth with the palm of your hand, it answers you with a deep murmur, the sound of bubbling water welling up from its depths; if you tap its sides with your knuckles, it gives a tinkling laugh of little silver coins falling on stones. It has many tongues: it speaks of the language of clay and minerals, of air currents flowing between canyon walls, of washerwomen as they scrub, of angry skies, of rain. A vessel of baked clay: do not put it in a glass case alongside rare precious objects. It would look quite out of place. Its beauty is related to the liquid that it contains and to the thirst that it quenches. Its beauty is corporal: I see it, I touch it, I smell it, I hear it. If it is empty, It must be filled; if it is full, it must be emptied. I take it by the shaped handle as I would take a woman by the arm, I lift it up, I tip over a pitcher into which I pour milk or pulque - lunar liquids that open and close the doors of dawn and dark, waking a sleeping.

What currently prevents your dreams from becoming reality is buried trauma keeping you trapped in your past, shutting down your confidence and imagination. Sure, trauma occurs as major, life-altering events. But more often, “trauma” is planted in minor incidents and conversations that limit your view of who you are and what you can do, creating a fixed mindset.

She nearly stopped forever just outside Ashton, because she came to a tiny cottage buried in a garden. I could live there all alone, she thought, slowing the car to look down the winding garden path to the small blue front door with, perfectly, a white cat on the step. No one would ever find me there, either, behind all those roses, and just to make sure I would plant oleanders by the road. I will light a fire in the cool evenings and toast apples at my own hearth. I will raise white cats and sew white curtains for the windows and sometimes come out of my door to go to the store to buy cinnamon and tea and thread. People will come to me to have their fortunes told, and I will brew love potions for sad maidens; I will have a robin. . . .

Every generation of children instinctively nests itself in nature, no matter matter how tiny a scrap of it they can grasp. In a tale of one city child, the poet Audre Lord remembers picking tufts of grass which crept up through the paving stones in New York City and giving them as bouquets to her mother. It is a tale of two necessities. The grass must grow, no matter the concrete suppressing it. The child must find her way to the green, no matter the edifice which would crush it. "The Maori word for placenta is the same word for land, so at birth the placenta is buried, put back in the mothering earth. A Hindu baby may receive the sun-showing rite surya-darsana when, with conch shells ringing to the skies, the child is introduced to the sun. A newborn child of the Tonga people 'meets' the moon, dipped in the ocean of Kosi Bay in KwaZulu-Natal. Among some of the tribes of India, the qualities of different aspects of nature are invoked to bless the child, so he or she may have the characteristics of earth, sky and wind, of birds and animals, right down to the earthworm. Nothing is unbelonging to the child. "'My oldest memories have the flavor of earth,' wrote Frederico García Lorca. In the traditions of the Australian deserts, even from its time in the womb, the baby is catscradled in kinship with the world. Born into a sandy hollow, it is cleaned with sand and 'smoked' by fire, and everything -- insects, birds, plants, and animals -- is named to the child, who is told not only what everything is called but also the relationship between the child and each creature. Story and song weave the child into the subtle world of the Dreaming, the nested knowledge of how the child belongs. "The threads which tie the child to the land include its conception site and the significant places of the Dreaming inherited through its parents. Introduced to creatures and land features as to relations, the child is folded into the land, wrapped into country, and the stories press on the child's mind like the making of felt -- soft and often -- storytelling until the feeling of the story of the country is impressed into the landscape of the child's mind. "That the juggernaut of ants belongs to a child, belligerently following its own trail. That the twitch of an animal's tail is part of a child's own tale or storyline, once and now again. That on the papery bark of a tree may be written the songline of a child's name. That the prickles of a thornbush may have dynamic relevance to conscience. That a damp hollow by the riverbank is not an occasional place to visit but a permanent part of who you are. This is the beginning of belonging, the beginning of love. "In the art and myth of Indigenous Australia, the Ancestors seeded the country with its children, so the shimmering, pouring, circling, wheeling, spinning land is lit up with them, cartwheeling into life.... "The human heart's love for nature cannot ultimately be concreted over. Like Audre Lord's tufts of grass, will crack apart paving stones to grasp the sun. Children know they are made of the same stuff as the grass, as Walt Whitman describes nature creating the child who becomes what he sees: There was a child went forth every day And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became... The early lilacs became part of this child... And the song of the phoebe-bird... In Australia, people may talk of the child's conception site as the origin of their selfhood and their picture of themselves. As Whitman wrote of the child becoming aspects of the land, so in Northern Queensland a Kunjen elder describes the conception site as 'the home place for your image.' Land can make someone who they are, giving them fragments of themselves.

Now comes the fun part,” he whispered. His cold hands ran down my calves to my ankles, which he pressed against the side of the couch and into hard metal bands that snapped around them like shackles.  “What was that?” I asked, sitting up. He stood, his muscular frame leaning as he towered over me, his chest sliding over my spread legs.  “Those are to keep you where I want you,” Saxon whispered as his hands continued over my body, gliding or whispering over my abdomen, around my breasts, to my shoulders, and down my arms. The farther up my arms his fingers moved, the closer he came to my lips, to my neck. His fangs were fully exposed.  “Do you want to be mine?” Saxon asked, his nose trailing over my neck. He planted his lips against my jaw, the touch a burning cold. I shivered. “Do you want to be right where I want you?” “Yes,” I gasped, knowing that I did, no matter how terrifying the fact that I couldn't move was making me.  “Good,” Saxon whispered, his hands rough against my arm as he pressed my wrists against the sides of the couch and into the bands that instantly snapped together to lock me in place.  I made a sound that was half fear, half pleasure. As I re-balanced my weight trying to get away from the cold bands only to find that I was captured.  Held against the couch. Caught underneath the Vampire who smiled as he ripped my bra and panties from my soaked and wanting body in one quick motion. “You smell so good, Ivy,” Saxon said, running his nose down my neck and over my bare breasts where his tongue darted out to capture my nipple for a moment. I moaned and he continued down, his hands running down my sides, down my legs, as he inhaled the scent of my stomach.  The scent of my sex.  “My rose,” he murmured, burying his face between my legs, his cold tongue darting out to flick at my clit. I gasped at the contact, a thrill of pleasure shooting up my spine. My body convulsed as he nipped at the tiny nub of aroused flesh, my back attempting to arch, my hips working to press in to him, but I couldn’t move. Judging by the pricks of cold metal that was all up and down my legs and arms, he had bound me by more than my ankles and wrists. A split second of panic captured my breath. “Saxon,” I moaned, shifting as the pleasure began to overtake me.

confetti.” In May, when coyotes howl beneath an unnervingly large moon, taller plants, such as spiderworts and black-eyed Susans, begin to creep over the tinier blooms, stealing their light and water. The necks of the smaller flowers break and their petals flutter away, and before long they are buried underground. This is why the Osage Indians refer to May as the time of the flower-killing moon.

(The potato’s cold tolerance spurred its embrace by European peasants. Not only did potatoes grow in places where other crops could not, the plant was an ally in smallholders’ ceaseless struggle against the economic and political elite. A farmer’s barnful of wheat, rye, or barley was a fat target for greedy landlords and marauding armies; buried in the soil, a crop of potatoes could not be easily seized.)

I walked out this evening to the bottom of the garden and smoked a cigarette. Last week I planted an acer in the furthest bed from the house, in honour of our new baby. The sapling is as tall as me and, by all accounts, it can grow forty feet tall. So, in thirty year's time, if we're still here I can come back and see this tree in its maturity. But the thought depresses me: in thirty years' time I'll be in my mid-sixties and I realize that these forward projections that you make, so unreflectingly, in your life are beginning to run out. Suppose I'd said in forty years' time? That would be pushing it, Fifty? I'll probably be gone by then. Sixty? Dead and buried, for sure. Thank Christ I didn't plant an oak. Is that a good definition of of marking the ageing watershed? That moment when you realize-quite rationally, quite unemotionally-that the world in the not-so-distant future will not contain you: that the trees you planted will continue growing but you will not be there to see them.

Life has come to a silent pause, The fear of Virus, the slowdown, Disconnecting me from moments, Heart has taken over the mind, Light now shines upon my eyes, Dreams blocked, the roads traversed, The break has broken the barrier, Me pondering, was I living my life? The days are same and so is night, The Sun, the Moon, and the stars, still rise in the east and set in the west, Trees, plants, flowers there as before, The sky, clouds rivers and oceans, Earth's precious treasures, no different, Change is in my perspective n priorities, Is it that I am learning to live my life. Monotonous tedium chores, Unpleasant hunger for wealth, Most of us are living dead, Body just awaits the soul to leave, To be buried or cremated, Waste of life and for what price, All material things cherished, Useless in our last flight. Time to fall in love with my life, Stop living for others, their expectations, I am again the owner of my choices, Not bothered to please others, Nor what they think about me, My dreams are alive and back, My treasurers are now my deeds, I have finally learnt to live!!!

The journey of a thousands suns begins today. Some may question whether the journey is worth the sacrifice and danger. To them I say that no sacrifice is too dear and no danger too great to ensure the very survival of our human species. What will we find when we arrive at our new homes? That's an open question. For a century, deep-space probes have reported alien lifeforms, but thus far none of which we recognize as intelligent beings. Are we the only biological intelligence in the universe? Perhaps our definition of intelligence is too narrow, too specio-centric. For, are not trees intelligent, who know to shed their leaves at the end of summer? Are not turtles intelligent, who know when to bury themselves in mud under ice? Is not all life intelligent, that knows how to pass its vital essence to new generations? Because half of intelligence resides in the body, be it plant or animal. I now commend these brave colonists to the galaxy, to join their minds and bodies to the community of living beings they will encounter there, and to establish our rightful place among the stars.

What do we mean by the lived truth of creation? We have to mean the world as it appears to men in a condition of relative unrepression; that is, as it would appear to creatures who assessed their true puniness in the face of the overwhelmingness and majesty of the universe, of the unspeakable miracle of even the single created object; as it probably appeared to the earliest men on the planet and to those extrasensitive types who have filled the roles of shaman, prophet, saint, poet, and artist. What is unique about their perception of reality is that it is alive to the panic inherent in creation: Sylvia Plath somewhere named God "King Panic." And Panic is fittingly King of the Grotesque. What are we to make of a creation in which the routine activity is for organisms to be tearing others apart with teeth of all types-biting, grinding flesh, plant stalks, bones between molars, pushing the pulp greedily down the gullet with delight, incorporating its essence into one's own organization, and then excreting with foul stench and gasses the residue. Everyone reaching out to incorporate others who are edible to him. The mosquitoes bloating themselves on blood, the maggots, the killerbees attacking with a fury and demonism, sharks continuing to tear and swallow while their own innards are being torn out-not to mention the daily dismemberment and slaughter in "natural" accidents of all types: the earthquake buries alive 70 thousand bodies in Peru, automobiles make a pyramid heap of over 50 thousand a year in the U.S. alone, a tidal wave washes over a quarter of a million in the Indian Ocean. Creation is a nightmare spectacular taking place on a planet that has been soaked for hundreds of millions of years in the blood of all its creatures. The soberest conclusion that we could make about what has actually been taking place on the planet for about three billion years is that it is being turned into a vast pit of fertilizer. But the sun distracts our attention, always baking the blood dry, making things grow over it, and with its warmth giving the hope that comes with the organism's comfort and expansiveness. "Questo sol m'arde, e questo m'innamore," as Michelangelo put it.

Imagination, then, must be the flip side of memory, not so much a calling up as a calling forth. Yet imagination also relies on knowledge: on knowing what is—and is not—possible in this world of fact. Imagination plants the seed or buries the bulb knowing the seasons will shift, seeing, in the mind’s eye, April give way to August, the azalea to the rose, knowing that the red leaves of the maple will burnish in autumn, knowing that from this exact window, one can look down to the inlet where the moon’s reflection will be just another shimmering white blossom.

Oh! to think that he should actually let her come as near to him as that! He knew nothing in the world would make her put out her hand toward him or startle him in the least tiniest way. He knew it because he was a real person—only nicer than any other person in the world. She was so happy that she scarcely dared to breathe. The flower-bed was not quite bare. It was bare of flowers because the perennial plants had been cut down for their winter rest, but there were tall shrubs and low ones which grew together at the back of the bed, and as the robin hopped about under them she saw him hop over a small pile of freshly turned up earth. He stopped on it to look for a worm. The earth had been turned up because a dog had been trying to dig up a mole and he had scratched quite a deep hole. Mary looked at it, not really knowing why the hole was there, and as she looked she saw something almost buried in the newly-turned soil. It was something like a ring of rusty iron or brass and when the robin flew up into a tree nearby she put out her hand and picked the ring up. It was more than a ring, however; it was an old key which looked as if it had been buried a long time.

What actually happens when you die is your brain stops working and your body rots, like Rabbit did when he died and we buried him in the earth at the bottom of the garden. And all his molecules were broken down into other molecules and they went into the earth and were eaten by worms and went into the plants and if we go and dig in the same place in 10 years there will be nothing except his skeleton left. And in 1,000 years even his skeleton will be gone. But that is all right because he is a part of the flowers and the apple tree and the hawthorn bush now. When people die they are sometimes put into coffins, which mean that they don't mix with the earth for a very long time until the wood of the coffin rots. But Mother was cremated. This means she was put into a coffin and burned and ground up and turned into ash and smoke. I do not know what happens to the ash and I couldn't ask at the crematorium because I didn't go to the funeral. But the smoke goes out of the chimney and into the air and sometimes I look up into the sky and I think there are molecules of Mother up there, or in clouds over Africa or the Antarctic, or coming down as rain in the rain forests in Brazil, or in snow somewhere.

When they first came back to Kabul, it distressed Laila that she didn’t know where the Taliban had buried Mariam. She wished she could visit Mariam’s grave, to sit with her awhile, leave a flower or two. But Laila sees now that it doesn’t matter. Mariam is never very far. She is here, in these walls they’ve repainted, in the trees they’ve planted, in the blankets that keep the children warm, in these pillows and books and pencils. She is in the children’s laughter. She is in the verses Aziza recites and in the prayers she mutters when she bows westward. But, mostly, Mariam is in Laila’s own heart, where she shines with the bursting radiance of a thousand suns.

Fireheart sprang forward and burst through the curtain of lichen. Tigerclaw and Bluestar were writhing on the floor of the den. Bluestar’s claws scored again and again across Tigerclaw’s shoulder, but the deputy’s greater weight kept her pinned down in the soft sand. Tigerclaw’s fangs were buried in her throat, and his powerful claws raked her back. “Traitor!” Fireheart yowled. He flung himself at Tigerclaw, slashing at his eyes. The deputy reared back, forced to release his grip on Bluestar’s throat. Fireheart felt his claws rip through the deputy’s ear, spraying blood into the air. Bluestar scrambled to the side of the den, looking half stunned. Fireheart could not tell how badly hurt she was. Pain lanced through him as Tigerclaw gashed his side with a blow from his powerful hindpaws. Fireheart’s paws skidded in the sand and he lost his balance, hitting the ground with Tigerclaw on top of him. The deputy’s amber eyes blazed into his. “Mousedung!” he hissed. “I’ll flay you, Fireheart. I’ve waited a long time for this.” Fireheart summoned every scrap of skill and strength he possessed. He knew Tigerclaw could kill him, but in spite of that he felt strangely free. The lies and the need for deceit were over. The secrets—Bluestar’s and Tigerclaw’s—were all out in the open. There was only the clean danger of battle. He aimed a blow at Tigerclaw’s throat, but the deputy swung his head to one side and Fireheart’s claws scraped harmlessly through thick tabby fur. But the blow had loosened Tigerclaw’s grip on him. Fireheart rolled away, narrowly avoiding a killing bite to his neck. “Kittypet!” Tigerclaw taunted, flexing his haunches to pounce again. “Come and find out how a real warrior fights.” He threw himself at Fireheart, but at the last moment Fireheart darted aside. As Tigerclaw tried to turn in the narrow den, his paws slipped on a splash of blood and he crashed awkwardly onto one side. At once Fireheart saw his chance. His claws sliced down to open a gash in Tigerclaw’s belly. Blood welled up, soaking into the deputy’s fur. He let out a high-pitched caterwaul. Fireheart pounced on him, raking claws across his belly again, and fastening his teeth into Tigerclaw’s neck. The deputy struggled vainly to free himself, his thrashing growing weaker as the blood flowed. Fireheart let go of his neck, planting one paw on Tigerclaw’s outstretched foreleg, and the other on his chest. “Bluestar!” he called. “Help me hold him down!” Bluestar was crouching behind him in her moss-lined nest. Blood trickled down her forehead, but that did not alarm Fireheart as much as the look in her eyes. They were a vague, cloudy blue, and she stared horror-struck in front of her as if she was witnessing the destruction

There were two brothers and a sister. And they had heard from the sky, or from the winds, that Jesus Christ had been born and had grown to manhood. There were portents and dreams that told them about him. Finally the two brothers started for Jerusalem, leaving their sister at home in this place. And they arrived on the day of the crucifixion, so they only saw him dead. And these two brothers from this pass in the Georgian mountains were heartbroken, and they begged a piece of the body-cloth of Jesus, and they brought it home to their sister. She was grief-stricken by the crucifixion, and she clutched the cloth, and fell sick and died of sorrow, and her dead hand held the cloth against her heart. Then the brothers tried to release the cloth, but her hand held firm and they could not get it away from her. And so she was buried with the cloth still held in her hand. She was buried right in this place where the church now stands. And almost immediately a plant grew out of the grave and became a giant tree. After a number of years it was desired to build a church in this place to commemorate the event. And woodsmen came and tried to cut the tree, but their axes flew to pieces against its trunk. Everyone tried to cut the tree, and they couldn't make a dent in it. Finally two angels came and cut the tree, and the church was built over the spot. The dark woman pointed to a curious tent-like structure of clay inside the church, and this is where the grave was, she said, and this is where the tree stood. And under the clay tent undoubtedly was the body of the holy woman, still clutching the piece of the cloth that had been worn by Jesus.

Since our civilization is irreversibly dependent on electronics, abolition of EMR is out of the question. However, as a first step toward averting disaster, we must halt the introduction of new sources of electromagnetic energy while we investigate the biohazards of those we already have with a completeness and honesty that have so far been in short supply. New sources must be allowed only after their risks have been evaluated on the basis of the knowledge acquired in such a moratorium. 
With an adequately funded research program, the moratorium need last no more than five years, and the ensuing changes could almost certainly be performed without major economic trauma. It seems possible that a different power frequency—say 400 hertz instead of 60—might prove much safer. Burying power lines and providing them with grounded shields would reduce the electric fields around them, and magnetic shielding is also feasible. 
A major part of the safety changes would consist of energy-efficiency reforms that would benefit the economy in the long run. These new directions would have been taken years ago but for the opposition of power companies concerned with their short-term profits, and a government unwilling to challenge them. It is possible to redesign many appliances and communications devices so they use far less energy. The entire power supply could be decentralized by feeding electricity from renewable sources (wind, flowing water, sunlight, georhermal and ocean thermal energy conversion, and so forth) into local distribution nets. This would greatly decrease hazards by reducing the voltages and amperages required. Ultimately, most EMR hazards could be eliminated by the development of efficient photoelectric converters to be used as the primary power source at each point of consumption. The changeover would even pay for itself, as the loss factors of long-distance power transmission—not to mention the astronomical costs of building and decommissioning short-lived nuclear power plants—were eliminated. Safety need not imply giving up our beneficial machines. 
Obviously, given the present technomilitary control of society in most parts of the world, such sane efficiency will be immensely difficult to achieve. Nevertheless, we must try. Electromagnetic energy presents us with the same imperative as nuclear energy: Our survival depends on the ability of upright scientists and other people of goodwill to break the military-industrial death grip on our policy-making institutions.

We've taken it away too much, the funeral people take over. No. Let people bury their own." "Do you think it helps people to go through the process and be intimately involved?" "Yes of course, of course!" It's the most emphatic Steve has been about anything. "Keep the body at home, put it on the dining table, let the kids sleep under the table, paint the coffin, decorate it, eat. When my brother died we had fights over the coffin drinking whiskey. I remember one brother pounding Bill's coffin 'Oh you bastard!' It was our lives. We carried the coffin, we filled in the hole. I used to work in the garden as a boy with my father. And I dug the hole to put his plants in and filled in the hole. In the end we put Dad into the ground and I helped my brothers fill in the hole. We need to do it ourselves." "Why do you think it helps to have that involvement?" "It's our responsibility, it's not to help, it's enabling us to grieve, it's enabling us to go through it together. Otherwise it's taken away and whoosh - it's gone. And you can't grieve. You've got to feel, you've got to touch, you've got to be there." Steve is passionate. He reaches into his bag to pull out something to show me. It's an old yellowing newspaper clipping. The caption reads 'Devastation: a woman in despair at the site of the blasts near the Turkey-Syrian border'. The photograph is a woman, she has her arms open to the sky and she is wailing, her head thrown back. "I pray in front of that" Steve tells me as I look at it. "That's a wonderful photo of the pain of our world. I don't know if she's lost relatives or what's blown up. You have a substance to your life if you've felt pain, you've got understanding, that's where compassion is, it makes you a deeper richer human being.

The plea for ethical veganism, which rejects the treatment of birds and other animals as a food source or other commodity, is sometimes mistaken as a plea for dietary purity and elitism, as if formalistic food exercises and barren piety were the point of the desire to get the slaughterhouse out of one’s kitchen and one’s system. Abstractions such as 'vegetarianism' and 'veganism' mask the experiential and philosophical roots of a plant-based diet. They make the realities of 'food' animal production and consumption seem abstract and trivial, mere matters of ideological preference and consequence, or of individual taste, like selecting a shirt, or hair color. However, the decision that has led millions of people to stop eating other animals is not rooted in arid adherence to diet or dogma, but in the desire to eliminate the kinds of experiences that using animals for food confers upon beings with feelings. The philosophic vegetarian believes with Isaac Bashevis Singer that even if God or Nature sides with the killers, one is obliged to protest. The human commitment to harmony, justice, peace, and love is ironic as long as we continue to support the suffering and shame of the slaughterhouse and its satellite operations. Vegetarians do not eat animals, but, according to the traditional use of the term, they may choose to consume dairy products and eggs, in which case they are called lacto-ovo (milk and egg) vegetarians. In reality, the distinction between meat on the one hand and dairy products and eggs on the other is moot, as the production of milk and eggs involves as much cruelty and killing as meat production does: surplus cockerels and calves, as well as spent hens and cows, have been slaughtered, bludgeoned, drowned, ditched, and buried alive through the ages. Spent commercial dairy cows and laying hens endure agonizing days of pre-slaughter starvation and long trips to the slaughterhouse because of their low market value.

She knows she should feel excited about her acceptance to Emory and the promise of spring break. She should feel infinite and hopeful, like the growing earth around her. Like the sunlight, which stretches longer each day, asking for one more minute, one more oak tree to shimmer on. Like the late March mornings, which arrive carrying a gentle heat, rocking it back and forth over the pavement in the parking lot, letting it crawl forth over the grass and the tree roots, nurturing it while it is still nascent and tender, before it turns into swollen summer. But while the whole earth prepares for spring, Hannah feels a great anxiety in her heart, for something dangerous has grown in her, something she never planted or even wanted to plant. It’s there. She knows it’s there. If she’s truthful with herself, she’s probably known it all along. But now, as the days grow longer and the Garden District grows greener, she can actually see it. It has sprung up at last, and it refuses to be unseen. She tells herself it’s passing. It’s temporary. It’s intensified only because she’s a senior and all of her emotions are heightened. It’s innocent. It’s typical for a girl her age. It’s no more or less of a feeling than everyone else has had at 17. But deep down, deep below the topsoil of her heart, she knows it’s not. Still, she pushes it down inside of her, buries it as far as it can go, suffocates it in the space between her stomach and her heart. She tells herself that she is stronger, that she can fight it, that she has control. That no one else has to know. I can ignore it, she thinks. I can refuse to look at it. I can stomp on it every time it springs up within me. So she lies to herself that everything is normal. That she is normal. She carries herself through the end of the school week by refusing to acknowledge it. By refusing to align her heart with the growing sunlight and the nurturing heat and the flowering plants and the tall, proud trees. ‘You alright?’ Baker asks, when Hannah says goodbye to her after school on Friday. Hannah stomps, buries, suffocates, wishes for death. ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘I’m good.

He leaned down and kissed her stomach, her hip bones, while his big hands held her in place. Then his mouth was on her, covering her, licking over her clit. She arched up, crying out as his tongue slid over her folds, making her mindless and crazy. She clutched the pillow, burying her head into the softness as he sucked and licked, nipping over her skin. She clamped her thighs around his head. Whimpered. He was going to drive her right over the edge. His tongue lapped over her clit. "Jack, stop," she said, her voice harsh and panting. "I'm going to... God... No... I want..." He didn't stop. Didn't ease up. He just pushed her harder. His tongue. It was magic. The condom packet slid off her stomach as she planted her feet and rocked into him. Giving up, surrendering to his will and determination. Everything that made Jack, Jack. She coiled tight and then she exploded. She bit her lip, stifling her moans as she rode out wave after wave of delicious sensation. She couldn't think, couldn't put together a sentence, but then he was on her, over her. His palm on her neck, his fingers on her jaw, twisting her face to meet his. His mouth covered hers. He tasted like sex. And lust. His grasp was tight on her jaw, and the way he kissed her, devoured her, sucked her right back under. It was a raw, dirty kiss that consumed her. Her fingers came up to where he held her, and she dug her nails into his wrists. He growled against her lips, biting her, sucking. And the kiss went on and on and on. He finally pulled away, grabbed the condom, and tore open the package. He tossed it onto her body again, ridding himself of his sweats, and then he was naked. And she could only gape at him. Her gaze wide. He had the best cock she'd ever seen in her life. Long and thick. A work of goddamn art. She reached for him, but he grabbed her wrist, shaking his head. "I can't wait, Chlo." He picked up the condom, threw the packet on the floor somewhere and rolled the condom down his hard shaft. She breathed out his name. "Jack." He leaned down, kissing her again, soft and sweet. His erection nudged between her legs. "Just let me inside.

The morning after / my death” The morning after my death we will sit in cafés but I will not be there I will not be * There was the great death of birds the moon was consumed with fire the stars were visible until noon. Green was the forest drenched with shadows the roads were serpentine A redwood tree stood alone with its lean and lit body unable to follow the cars that went by with frenzy a tree is always an immutable traveller. The moon darkened at dawn the mountain quivered with anticipation and the ocean was double-shaded: the blue of its surface with the blue of flowers mingled in horizontal water trails there was a breeze to witness the hour * The sun darkened at the fifth hour of the day the beach was covered with conversations pebbles started to pour into holes and waves came in like horses. * The moon darkened on Christmas eve angels ate lemons in illuminated churches there was a blue rug planted with stars above our heads lemonade and war news competed for our attention our breath was warmer than the hills. * There was a great slaughter of rocks of spring leaves of creeks the stars showed fully the last king of the Mountain gave battle and got killed. We lay on the grass covered dried blood with our bodies green blades swayed between our teeth. * We went out to sea a bank of whales was heading South a young man among us a hero tried to straddle one of the sea creatures his body emerged as a muddy pool as mud we waved goodbye to his remnants happy not to have to bury him in the early hours of the day We got drunk in a barroom the small town of Fairfax had just gone to bed cherry trees were bending under the weight of their flowers: they were involved in a ceremonial dance to which no one had ever been invited. * I know flowers to be funeral companions they make poisons and venoms and eat abandoned stone walls I know flowers shine stronger than the sun their eclipse means the end of times but I love flowers for their treachery their fragile bodies grace my imagination’s avenues without their presence my mind would be an unmarked grave. * We met a great storm at sea looked back at the rocking cliffs the sand was going under black birds were leaving the storm ate friends and foes alike water turned into salt for my wounds. * Flowers end in frozen patterns artificial gardens cover the floors we get up close to midnight search with powerful lights the tiniest shrubs on the meadows A stream desperately is running to the ocean The Spring Flowers Own & The Manifestations of the Voyage (The Post-Apollo Press, 1990)

I’ll tell you what,” she said, prepared to make a deal. “Let’s see how your ‘diplomacy’ would profit us. If you can give me a decent solution to a pretend situation, I’ll agree to have you accompany me instead of Shanks. Although, I don’t know how wise it is to leave a Viidun captain on the Kemeniroc in your absence.” Derian agreed to the test. “Okay, what’s your question?” She thought hard for a moment; her eyes scrunching in concentration, lips pulled down to one side. Then, as a crooked grin spread across her lips, she set up an imagined scenario. “Pretend we’re down on the planet with this King Wennergren when he graciously offers to walk us through his cherished garden. While we’re there he begs me to touch his favorite, award-winning flower, hoping my powers will make it thrive and blossom. But for some strange reason it doesn’t respond to me the way plants do on our world. Instead of thriving, the flower withers and dies right before his shocked and furious eyes. Now pretend he’s easily offended and has a horrible temper…” Derian cut it. “You have no idea what his temperament is like.” “I know. That’s not the point.” Her eyes scolded him for interrupting. “Just pretend that he becomes outraged by my actions, assuming that I purposefully destroyed his prized plant. The angry king orders both of us to be seized and thrown into his deep, dark, inescapable dungeon. But, somehow we manage to dodge his line of soldiers and run into a nearby congested jungle, hiding beneath the foliage from our determined pursuers. “Finally, pretend that we trudge along for hours, so deep within the trees that we begin to hear howling in the distance from dangerous, hungry beasts. They seem to sound off all around us. Every now and then we hear weapon’s fire as King Wennergren’s men fend off these wild animals. This only reminds us that the soldiers are still in pursuit. Far, far buried within the dark jungle we spot a clearing and head for it. Unfortunately, once we reach it we come across an entire pack of ferocious animals who begin to stalk us. So we turn around, only to face a line of soldiers from behind, pointing their weapons our direction. We’re surrounded by danger on both sides, Derian! Now, what do you do?” She looked at him, wide-eyed and expectant. “Eena, you have a terribly overactive imagination,” he said flatly. She rolled her eyes, then impatiently asked him again, “Well? What would you do?” “I’d stop pretending." She fell back in her chair, groaning. “You’re still not going.” “Try and stop me,” he dared. “You know I can,” she reminded him. He glared at her. “When the time comes, we’ll see.

Did It Ever Occur to You That Maybe You’re Falling in Love? BY AILISH HOPPER We buried the problem. We planted a tree over the problem. We regretted our actions toward the problem. We declined to comment on the problem. We carved a memorial to the problem, dedicated it. Forgot our handkerchief. We removed all “unnatural” ingredients, handcrafted a locally-grown tincture for the problem. But nobody bought it. We freshly-laundered, bleached, deodorized the problem. We built a wall around the problem, tagged it with pictures of children, birds in trees. We renamed the problem, and denounced those who used the old name. We wrote a law for the problem, but it died in committee. We drove the problem out with loud noises from homemade instruments. We marched, leafleted, sang hymns, linked arms with the problem, got dragged to jail, got spat on by the problem and let out. We elected an official who Finally Gets the problem. … We watched carefully for the problem, but our flashlight died. We had dreams of the problem. In which we could no longer recognize ourselves. We reformed. We transformed. Turned over a new leaf. Turned a corner, found ourselves near a scent that somehow reminded us of the problem, In ways we could never Put into words. That Little I-can’t-explain-it That makes it hard to think. That Rings like a siren inside.

I The calluses on his feet have grown the size of garlic: a bulb for each heel. His skin is thick under the layers of thinning tatters: of various fading colors, worn-out labels of clothes and pesticide bottles that buried him in debt when the lean season came. The shadow of his nose, the dark in his sun-browned face creases as he narrates his story. A flame dances between us as his wife tells of how her hands were viciously lashed when she tried to save their crops from being inundated: livelihoods eventually needed washing off by the stream. Even without the onset of drought, even without the coming of storms calluses grow enourmous, hands get bloodied and torn. What do we know about exploitation? Who planted the greedy plunderers in our land? Where are its roots, when do we pull out abuse by its foundations? What kind of calamity is this semi-feudalism? II. The streams are being muddied by footsteps rushing towards each front, to the fields where a new government is a seedling born. What law of the land, law of the heavens, raging miracle or pains of hunger brought us over to the side of the people? There is none that was written or told, none that was carved or sculpted. No book, no legend. We are here asking: What law? We who are mere drops in an unstoppable surge that comes. - Translation of Kerima Lorena Tariman’s “Salaysay at Kasaysayan” By ILANG-ILANG QUIJANO

The darkness was bewildering. Man requires light. Whoever buries himself in the opposite of day feels his heart contract. When the eye sees black, the heart sees trouble. In an eclipse in the night, in the sooty opacity, there is anxiety even for the stoutest of hearts. No one walks alone in the forest at night without trembling. Shadows and trees—two formidable densities. A chimerical reality appears in the indistinct depths. The inconceivable is outlined a few paces distant from you with a spectral clearness. One beholds floating, either in space or in one's own brain, one knows not what vague and intangible thing, like the dreams of sleeping flowers. There are fierce attitudes on the horizon. One inhales the effluvia of the great black void. One is afraid to glance behind him, yet desirous of doing so. The cavities of night, things grown haggard, taciturn profiles which vanish when one advances, obscure dishevelments, irritated tufts, livid pools, the lugubrious reflected in the funereal, the sepulchral immensity of silence, unknown but possible beings, bendings of mysterious branches, alarming torsos of trees, long handfuls of quivering plants,—against all this one has no protection. There is no hardihood which does not shudder and which does not feel the vicinity of anguish. One is conscious of something hideous, as though one's soul were becoming amalgamated with the darkness.

There, at the top of the stairs, was the world: acres and miles of open land, an arc of the planet, curving off and lighted in the distance under the morning sky. The building we had just passed through was, it turned out, only the entrance to an open dig, where Chinese archaeologists were in the years-long process of excavating a buried army of life-sized clay soldiers. I saw what looked like human bodies coming out of the earth. Straight trenches cut the bare soil into deep corridors or long pits. From the trench walls emerged an elbow here, a leg and foot there, a head and neck. Everything was the same color, the terra-cotta earth and the people: the color of plant pots. Seeing the broad earth under the open sky, and a patch of it sliced into deep corridors from which bodies emerge, surprises many people to tears. Who would not weep from shock? I seemed to see our lives from the aspect of eternity. I seemed long dead and looking down. For it is in our lifetimes alone that people can witness the unearthing of the deep-dwelling army of Emperor Qin—the seven thousand or the ten thousand soldiers, their real crossbows and swords, their horses and chariots, bared to the light for the first time in 2,200 years. “In the pictures of the old masters,” Max Picard wrote in The World of Silence, “people seem as though they had just come out of the opening in a wall; as if they had wriggled their way out with difficulty. They seem unsafe and hesitant because they have come out too far and still belong more to silence than themselves.

With the formed state having finished its course, high history also lays itself down weary to sleep. Man becomes a plant again, adhering to the soil, dumb and enduring. The timeless village and the "eternal" peasant reappear, begetting children and burying seed in Mother Earth—a busy, easily contented swarm, over which the tempest of soldier-emperors passingly blows. In the midst of the land lie the old world-cities, empty receptacles of an extinguished soul, in which a historyless mankind slowly nests itself. Men live from hand to mouth, with petty thrifts and petty fortunes, and endure. Masses are trampled on in the conflicts of the conquerors who contend for the power and the spoil of this world, but the survivors fill up the gaps with a primitive fertility and suffer on. And while in high places there is eternal alternance of victory and defeat, those in the depths pray, pray with that mighty piety of the Second Religiousness that has overcome all doubts forever. There, in the souls, world-peace, the peace of God, the bliss of grey-haired monks and hermits, is become actual—and there alone. It has awakened that depth in the endurance of suffering which the historical man in the thousand years of his development has never known. Only with the end of grand History does holy, still Being reappear. It is a drama noble in its aimlessness, noble and aimless as the course of the stars, the rotation of the earth, and alternance of land and sea, of ice and virgin forest upon its face. We may marvel at it or we may lament it—but so it is.

Every place held every memory of what it had once been. A plain that had been the bottom of a lake, the floor of a shallow sea, the lightless depths of a vast ocean. A hill that had been the peak of a young mountain, one of a chain of islands, the jagged fang of the earth buried in glacial ice. Dust that had been plants, sand that had been stone, stains that had been bone and flesh. Most memories, Kalyth understood, remain hidden, unseen and beneath the regard of flickering life. Yet, once the eyes were awakened, every memory was then unveiled, a fragment here, a hint there, a host of truths whispering of eternity. Such knowledge could crush a soul with its immensity, or drown it beneath a deluge of unbearable futility. As soon as the distinction was made, that separation of self from all the rest, from the entire world beyond-its ceaseless measure of time, its whimsical game with change played out in slow siege and in sudden catastrophe-then the self became an orphan, bereft all security, and face to face with a world now become at best a stranger, at worst an implacable, heartless foe. In arrogance we orphan ourselves, and then rail at the awful solitude we find on the road to death But how could one step back into the world? How could one learn to swim such currents? In self-proclamation, the soul decided what it was that lay within in opposition to all that lay beyond. Inside, outside, familiar, strange, that which is possessed, that which is coveted, all that is within grasp and all that is forever beyond reach. The distinction was a deep, vicious cut of a knife, severing tendons and muscles, arteries and nerves.

saw nothing finer or more moving in Russia than Tolstoy’s grave. That illustrious place of pilgrimage lies out of the way, alone in the middle of the woods. A narrow footpath leads to the mound, nothing but a rectangle of soil raised above ground level, with no one guarding or keeping watch on it, only two huge trees casting their shade. Leo Tolstoy planted those trees himself, so his granddaughter told me beside his grave. When he and his brother Nikolai were boys, they had heard one of the village women say that a place where you planted trees would be a happy one. So they planted two saplings, partly as a kind of game. Only later did the old man remember that promise of happiness, and then he expressed a wish to be buried under the trees he had planted. And his wish was carried out. In its heart-rending simplicity, his grave is the most impressive place of burial in the world. Just a small rectangular mound in the woods with trees overhead, no cross, no tombstone, no inscription. The great man who suffered more than anyone from his own famous name and reputation lies buried there, nameless, like a vagabond who happened to be found nearby or an unknown soldier. No one is forbidden to visit his last resting place; the flimsy wooden fence around it is not kept locked. Nothing guards that restless man’s final rest but human respect for him. While curious sightseers usually throng around the magnificence of a tomb, the compelling simplicity of this place banishes any desire to gape. The wind rushes like the word of God over the nameless grave, and no other voice is heard. You could pass the place without knowing any more than that someone is buried here, a Russian lying in Russian earth. Napoleon’s tomb beneath the marble dome of Les Invalides, Goethe’s in the grand-ducal vault at Weimar, the tombs in Westminster Abbey are none of them as moving as this silent and movingly anonymous grave somewhere in the woods, with only the wind whispering around it, uttering no word or message of its own.